1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to an image forming apparatus having a page sorting function and a method thereof, and more specifically, to an image forming apparatus capable of printing a plurality of scanned pages in predetermined page numbers and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In conventional image forming apparatuses, such as, printers, scanners, copiers, fax machines, multi-function devices, etc., the image forming apparatus having a copy function, e.g., a copier or a multi-function device, can copy a plurality of pages at one time.
In a case of copying or printing the plurality of pages at once, copiers usually print the plurality of pages in the same order as a paper stacking order. Therefore, if documents are staked randomly in page number, an operator (or a user) has to manually collate the copied papers and rearrange the copied papers according to the corrected page numbers.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 1999-220557 discloses an image forming apparatus, in which page numbers of individual scanned documents (pages) are recognized using an optical character recognition (OCR) function, and the scanned pages are arranged in ascending order of the page numbers according to the recognized page numbers to be printed in the ascending order of the page numbers. However, since the page sorting and printing jobs have to be executed after storing scan data of every page, it takes a longer period of time to perform a total copying process.